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Published on May 20, 2015

Cone Health Named High Performing in Five Areas by U.S. News & World Report

Cone Health has been rated high performing in all five areas used in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings. The ratings evaluate more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide on common inpatient procedures and conditions. Only 34 hospitals were rated High Performing in all five procedures and conditions. Cone Health is listed under The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital.

“It is great to receive this affirmation of the truly exceptional care that we provide at Cone Health,” says Cone Health Chief Medical Officer Bruce Swords, MD, PhD. “You can receive some of the highest-quality care available anywhere right here in the communities we serve.”

U.S. News evaluated hospitals in five procedures and medical conditions – heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – and rated them high performers, average or below average. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers in a particular procedure or condition.

“The choice of hospital is one of the most important and costly decisions an individual makes,” says U.S. News Chief of Health Analysis Ben Harder, “We evaluated the treatment of more than 3.6 million patients and identified a small percentage of hospitals that have superior outcomes compared with their peer institutions. Whenever possible, patients, in consultation with their doctors, should seek out high performing hospitals that excel in treating their specific condition.”

U.S. News created Best Hospitals for Common Care to help patients find better care for the kinds of common procedures and medical conditions that account for millions of hospitalizations each year. Objective outcome measures such as deaths, infections, readmissions, and operations that need to be repeated as well as patient satisfaction data largely determined the ratings. The Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings rely on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as survey data from the American Hospital Association and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Dr Foster, an international health care analytics company with expertise on claims-based risk adjustment, collaborated with U.S. News on the Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings methodology.